Inside Dublin City Council’s AI Lab

What does AI actually look like inside a local authority?

In this episode of Transform Gov, Dublin City Council’s AI Lab team — Khizer Ahmed Biyabani and Richie Shakespeare — explain how they are moving beyond AI hype to deliver practical tools that improve consistency, save time and build trust.

From preventing contradictory council answers to searching decades of records in seconds, they share what works, what doesn’t, and why 80% of AI success comes down to data.

Why Listen
• How AI prevents conflicting public-sector responses
• Turning 1990s PDFs into instant search results
• Training 500+ staff and shifting sentiment from fear to confidence
• Why data readiness matters more than the AI itself

Timeline
00:00 — What the AI Lab is and why it exists
03:30 — Why a sandbox approach matters
11:30 — Training 500+ staff and changing AI sentiment
21:27 — “Ctrl+F on steroids”: AI for council questions
22:04 — Searching records back to the 1990s
24:29 — The truth: data preparation is 80% of the work
27:00 — Building control use cases and operational impact
32:40 — Scaling AI safely in local government

AI in government, digital transformation, local government innovation, generative AI, public sector technology, Ireland eGovernment Awards, smart cities, data governance
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